Maramures opens up the vistas of a fictional reality. Here you may find the Chekhovian characters in anonymous provincial towns of Russian society coming alive animatedly and you are welcome visitors to their old worldview. As scenes unfolded outside my moving car window, it was a continual intrusion of past in the present as the scenes of period films with sepia undertones kept flashing before my awestruck eyes. As the car screeched to a halt in anonymous Breb, I felt as if I have reached a land confronted way back either in fables or in the bedtime fairy tales.